1. Technical Field
This invention relates to data retrieval techniques and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for retrieving a data record of an item or object in a database with limited or incomplete input data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Service and product providers, when responding to customer requests, are required to locate specific records in databases which identify an item or object sought by a customer. Often the information provided by the customer is not complete or partially incorrect, however. One such example of an operation wherein a customer provides information for requesting a specific item is that provided by a mail order information center. The customer may, for example, electronically submit an order for a specific book for which he or she has only partial information and the information center then has to locate the specific record of this book in its database before it can fill the order. Orders are most often entered by customers using a request program that is available on thousands of computers. There is no validation for these requests but the information provided by the customers is entered in identified fields, such as title, author and the like. This information may consist of, singularly or in combination, arbitrary abbreviations, acronyms and even incorrect or misspelled words.
Thus the task for the service or product provider is to find the item or object with the given information. This type of database searching is most often done by operators who are familiar with the items or objects, the databases and also know how to resolve errors in the input data provided by the customers. Using known information retrieval techniques, a skilled operator can search the databases and mind the searches based on results obtained along the way. While this type of database searching has been found satisfactory where there are ample, available skilled operators, nevertheless, in order to be cost effective and still assure uniformity of results, it is desirable to automate the process of finding specific records of items or objects in databases.